Well, the FBI has been on a crypto treasure hunt, and boy, did they strike gold! Between March and July 2023, the agency seized a jaw-dropping $1.7 million in cryptocurrencies. Now, that’s what I call a successful raid!
So, what’s the backstory? A recent Federal Bureau of Investigation filing reveals that they’ve been quite the busy bees, confiscating nearly $1.7 million worth of cryptocurrency in just a few months. And guess what? The majority of these seizures came from Binance accounts. Talk about a plot twist!
Now, let’s dive deeper. The document from our friends at the FBI states that the seized property was all due to violations of federal law. No surprises there. But here it gets juicy: most confiscated assets were ether tokens, amounting to $800,000. The most significant chunk of this ether stash, valued at $463,811, was seized in the Eastern District of Virginia. And if we’re talking states, Florida and Virginia are the hotspots for these crypto confiscations.
But wait, there’s more! The FBI didn’t just stop at either. They also got their hands on a significant amount of stablecoins. In one particularly eye-popping case, they seized DAI worth a staggering $469,000, again in the Eastern District of Virginia. And while eight incidents of USDT were confiscated, USDC got a free pass this time.
Diversifying its crypto portfolio, the agency also bagged $147,000 worth of Bitcoin and $20,000 in Monero. And for those of you altcoin enthusiasts, Solana and Cardano appeared in the FBI’s list of confiscated assets. But here’s a fun tidbit: even meme coins couldn’t escape the FBI’s grasp. They managed to seize $200 worth of Dogecoin. Every little bit counts, right?
Now, for the pièce de résistance: the source of these seizures. Each entry in the FBI’s notification detailed where they got their hands on these assets. And while many were taken from hardware wallets, a whopping 46 confiscations came from Binance accounts. Interestingly, other major exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, Kucoin, and OKX seemed to have dodged the bullet this time.
